Vulnerable
by hueyofthefuture
Summary: He hated this. He had no control over it. No power.The threat of  vulnerability crawling over him.
1. Chapter 1

_Sylar.Sylar.Gabriel.Sylar.Sylar_

He hated this. He had no control over it. **No power.**

Sylar twisted and turned. Beads of sweat, collecting on his forehead. His eyes are shut as tight as possible.

It doesnt do anything.

It was still echoing inside his head. He let out a frustrated scream and woke himself up.

He looked around in the dark room, trying to catch his breath. The threat of vulnerability crawling over him.

It's getting worse. It happened every night. A voice inside his head. It never let him sleep.

It all began,

_after he took Claire Bennet's powers._

story begins here


	2. Chapter 2

_"aaaaah!!!"_ Claire screamed, it was sharp and loud. But somehow she got the feeling only she heard it. 

She was in total darkness.

"They'll do things to you, they'll push you to your limits, **make you wish that you could die**."

She could remember her father say.

If only she had listened... now she's trapped

inside the mind of a killer...


	3. Chapter 3

.. the first two chapters were just teasers, this is the actual story -the following transpires inside someones mind which is pretty similar to the world outside his mind, everything pretty much functions the same-  
(btw, you already who the other person is inside Sylar's mind, it comes right after the /):

* * *

_...She was in total darkness._

_"They'll do things to you, they'll push you to your limits, make you wish that you could die."_

_She could remember her father say..._

Her dad, he died protecting her...

apparently, his death was in vain. Claire couldnt help but cry. She hated the irony of how a girl can be physically indestructable, only feel pain for a matter of seconds and yet be bleeding forever inside.

The people that had to suffer for her... _her dad, Jackie, her adoptive mother, her biological mother_...It was all for nothing...

Had it been like the old times she'd tell her self to be strong, to hold on for the people she loves, she could always be normal, in their eyes shed never be a freak.

But now, she was lost, in a place she knew nothing about, a place that made her wish she could die.

* * *

Unknown to her, a pair of eyes have been watching her all along. He could see her, even in the darkness. He was used to it.

It was the prison that he has built himself. A prison where he was all alone, a captive of himself. Until she got there. He doesnt know how to trust anything in his mind anymore. **Especially after Sylar**.But her grief was too much for him to ignore.

"Excuse me." was all he said, and she could swear she almost had a heart attack. Granted she had one, of course. Her eyes were first startled, he knew she couldnt see him. He tried to take her hand but she pushed him away the moment she felt his hand on hers.

"Who are you?" She asked, threateningly. He knew she was trying to sound brave. But he also knew she was terrified. Like him.

"You wont know unless you come with me." he told her as gently as he can. He tried for her hand again, and this time she took it.

He brought her to the safest corner of his mind, the one that was actually _lit_. The last place he was at when he was outside, before he went on his quest to be _special_. The room where he made watches.

* * *

Claire followed the voice, she didnt really have a choice, the darkness terrified her and whoever the voice belonged to seemed to know his way around this place. She stopped thinking the moment they stopped walking.

A door opened and she could see from the light inside, the figure of a tall man. She coulnt make out who it was, all she could see was his back.

When she finally did, her voice was stuck in her throat. It was Sylar. She screamed, yet again.

**_"Sylar! Sylar!"_** she kept screaming, her voice echoing inside the small room. His little disguise of longer hair and glasses werent going to fool her.

"No, no!" he tried to calm her, but she kept backing up. She wasn't gonna let him hurt her again "My name is _**Gabriel**_." he tried to say above her screams.

_**"Sylar! Sylar!"**_ she screamed as she backed up against a cabinet. A cabinet that contained the heavy boxes of some watch parts. One fell on her head and sent her unconcious.


	4. Chapter 4

Gabrielle watched as the body he carefully layed on the table stirred. 

She opened her eyes and again, looked terrified.

"No, please listen, I'm not Sylar." He said before she could start screaming again.

She stared at him, hatred and confusion mixed in her blue eyes.

"then who are you?" she spat, looking him straight in the eye.

"I'm Gabriel, Sylar is the one _out there_" He said, motioning his head somewhere.

"what?!"

Gabriel drew a deep breath, How the hell is he supposed to explain?

"He's the one in control. He makes the decisions, he takes the actions. He's _taken over_." he tried, but she didnt look the least bit less confused.

Gabriel was starting to get frustrated.

"Do you know about Freud?" he asked, trying to sound patient.

"Yeah"

"then you know about the three components of the human mind: Id,ego, and supergeo?"

"The Ego is the concious part, the Id goes on the pleasure principle and superego is the one who says what wrong and right." she said in one breath.

"Exactly." _Finally, the pieces are falling together_. he thought.

"Sylar, he used to be both the Id and the superego, I was the one, out there."

he motioned again.

"Then somehow, I ended up, _here_."

"And here is _where exactly_?"

**"We're inside my mind."**


	5. Chapter 5

Sylar rubbed his eyes.

Another sleepless night was taking it's toll on him.

He got up, off the cheap bed on a cheap motel. He got on his feet and headed for the door.

He couldnt take the headaches anymore.

He saw a random car in the parking lot, a drunken man inside of it. He used his telekinesis to unlock the door.

The drunken man stirred,

"Hey man, what the hell?!" he said, slurred. Sylar didnt have time for this and his headache didnt make him the least bit more patient.

**He hurled the man right across the parking lot**, knowing that no one was around to see.

No one in the right mind would've been at this side of town. Only whores and drunkards.

Simple enough, the key was in the ignition. He turned it and got another headache from the machine's roar.

His sensitive hearing making it all worse. _How did that Hag get used to this?_

He drove out of the parking lot onto the street, passing by a bum slumped over a phone booth and a middle-aged woman wearing a skirt way too short.

He ignored them and focused his eyes on the road, brow furrowed.

He stopped in front of a little convinience store, inhaled deeply and got out of the car.

He cant afford to lose his cool again.

He did a quick scan of the store and headed to the aisle where he saw aspirin in a two-pill package.

He went by the cashier which some girl with strawberry blonde hair was standing. She rang it up for him.

"That'll be 6 dollars" she said with a practice smile. He took out money from his wallet.

"**Superego**."

"What was that sir?" The girl asked. _Yeah, what was that?,_ Sylar thought.

He faced her and smiled.

"_Nothing._"


	6. Chapter 6

"You heal." he said, his eyes temporarily leaving the watch he was tweaking to see her reaction. It has become a hobby of his, perfecting them, making them move at the most flawless efficiency.

He's also been taking track of the time, of how long he has been up there.

"Yeah, in a matter of seconds," He brought his eyes back down. "but----" Claire suddenly had a flashback, one she'd prefer not to have.

"Sylar got to you." Gabriel finished for her, looking up from what he was working on, eyes apologetic.

"Yeah," she said, voice low,"and my family."

Gabriel heard something in her voice. He didnt know what it was but it made him get up from where he was and make his way towards her.

Unsure and nervous, he put his hands on her shoulders. He expected her to flinch but she didnt. She just stood there, looking deep in thought.

"Why?!" She asked, her voice startling against the quiet ticks and hums of the watches. She turned to face him, her face was turning red and tears were running down her face.

"why couldnt I have just been-----normal?!" her voice was raising. It was starting to scare him but what could he do? _he was just a watchmaker_. She burried her face in his chest.

Her last words were ringing in his head.

* * *

"Normal?, why would anyone want to _just be normal?_"

Claire looked up. She was met by a face that she was starting to feel comfortable around, until now.

_It was a look..._

_in his eyes..._

_it was..._

_Sylar._


	7. Chapter 7

Sylar rushed back to the car. 

He drove, pedal to the metal as he rushed back to the motel.

From how he felt, he was going to have another headache, and it was going to be a big one. He didnt even bother to park the car, he just left it there, in the middle of the road.

He ran to his room, shut the door and braced himself...

Then came the sharp-shooting pain. It was like finger nails on a chalkboard, _with his heightened hearing_. He also heard a sudden outburst, _but it wasnt his own._

His knees went weak and he collapsed to the floor.

He hated this, he had no control over it, no power, the threat of vulnerability crawling all over him.

He pushed himself up, ran to the bottle of water he kept on the table and gulped down the aspirin he's bought.

It appears he'll be visiting an old friend tomorrow, the only one who could know what the hell was going on.


	8. Chapter 8

huey: fine, here you go, a chapter longer than the others.(I keep trying to edit it, but some parts just wont come out right..): 

The room shook, objects were falling from all directions. Claire had no idea what was going on. The walls started to crumble. She was horrified as everything shattered in front of her eyes. Gabriel was standing in the middle of it all.

Everything went dark again.

...Until new things started _building_ themselves like blocks, a piece piling on top of the other:  
An exhausted blue dining table,  
faded chairs,  
a little stove,  
wooden cabinets.  
Gabriel was still at the center, eyes a clean slate of white.

It was starting to reaveal itself now.  
It was some sort of memory:  
a teenage boy, probably around Claire's age, was sitting on the table, quietly eating his cereal.  
The door of his father's workshop was open. From where he was sitting he could clearly see the shadows of his parents. Right past the little cabinet of snowglobes.  
His father was just sitting there, fixing a timepiece, his mother however, was yelling, hands on her hips.  
"Is this what you'll be spending your life doing? Just sitting there, literally watching time pass you by?" she said, disgusted. It didnt bother the boy much, he's seen his parents fight many times before. His father was a quiet man, so they didnt really argue, it was just his mother yelling at his father until she's ran out of insults.

"Uhh!" his mother grunted in frustration.

"What are you complaining about? We're getting by, we're living a normal life." his father said in s hushed tone. She laughed sarcastically, her face turning bright red against her dull brown hair.

"Godammit, that's all we ever do! Just get by, just be normal! The front yard is a mess, oh that's normal," she said, clearly mocking him."we have the same thing everyday. that's normal, Gabriel might never go to college, that's normal! Our wallets are empty, oh wait, that's normal too  
"**normal,normal,normal, I'm sick of it**!" she spat as she left the room. She stormed right past the den and up the stairs, not even acknowledging the presence of her son.

The teenage boy brought his eyes back to the shadow of his father, he was still just sitting there, fixing the timepiece. The boy looked back down at his cereal.

Everything shattered again. This time, quicker, like someone throwing a rock at a glass window.

And one more, things came together, one thing piling on top of the other.

It was the same scene, but it was dinner time. The boy was sitting where he sat before, in between his mother and father. His father was quietly eating his dinner. His mother was glaring daggers at his father.

* * *

_Claire blinked._  
When she opened her eyes again she thought that it was over since she was back to the room where Gabriel first brought her.  
Until she heard a noise, towards the direction of the door. Standing there was the boy again. 

"Is it true?" he asked, voice low and curious.

His father stopped whatever he was doing and looked at his son. Claire gasped at how much he looked as Gabirel did when he asked about her ability.

"Is what true son?" He asked gently. A tear ran down Claire's cheek as the memory of Noah slipped.

"that I'm not going to college." He watched as his father drew a deep breath.

"I--I... you know how your mother is, she's in love with exhaggeration, Dont tell her but I think those snowglobes are representations of her br---"

"It's okay dad."

He saw a flash of relief in his father's exhausted eyes. It was like a cue for him to come over to where his father was. His father smiled and showed him what he was working on.

"With other watchmakers," he started, obviously catching his son's attention."what they look for is the weak point of the watch." The teenage boy focused his eyes on what his father held in his hands.

"But what you really have to look for is what makes the watch _different_ from other watches. you have to look for what makes them---" he paused, looking for a word to make sense of his statement.

"**tick**." The boy said, smiling.

"Exactly." the father replied

and everything turned white.

then dimmed to a grey. It was like de ja vu, because once again it was of the boy eating his cereal, watching the shadow of his parents. Everything was the same up to the way the mother placed her hands on her hips.  
Until instead of just listening to his wife yell at him, he stood up, walked through the den and paused in front of the door. He turned his head to face his son,  
the boy looked back down at his cereal.

* * *

Gabriel watched his past flash before his eyes. The last one shook him the most. 

He was walking out of a gift shop, a neatly wrapped box in his hands. He walked down the street, grinning like a child. He stopped in front of a beat up apartment and held his coat tighter around him.

He opened the door and found his mother sitting on the couch, seemingly uninterested in anything.

"Have you found a job?" she asked dryly. "(that) hopefully has nothing to do with shifts,gears and just getting by."

"No mom." his mother got up and walked towards the window, looking out.

"But I got you this" he said, walking over to his mother. He watched as she took the box from him and hastily opened it. Her eyes instantly lit up when she held up the sphere in her hands.

"I know how much you love snowglobes" his mother turned to him, looking pleased.

"I always knew you were'nt gonna be like your father. I always knew you were going to be so much more. You are going to be special. Stay here, I'll make you a sandwich."

...And yet the odds of that increased everyday and his mothers disappointment grew as he spent his days continuing his father's work.

Until the day a man named Chandra Suresh came into his life. The man that confirmed that he was going to be important, that he was _special._

* * *

Claire watched as his eyes lit up when he was talking to the Genetisist.Out of nowhere, everything started _melting_. She searched frantically for Gabriel. 

She found him lying in the middle of the distorted figures, gasping for air and sweating profusely. She ran to him and cradled him in her arms, his eyes turned from white, to black, to brown before closing.


	9. Chapter 9

so, here is what **_could've_** happened had i not turned lazy and uninspired by the second season.

vulnerable:

*gabriel explains that no matter which one is at the steering wheel, him and sylar are one.

*mohinder and a neurosurgeon '_extract_' claire's essence so claire can get out.

*sylar has also become '_attached_' to claire, at one point even going to claire's old room and just 'feeling' her through her things that "_dear old sandra bennet so carefully preserved._"

*at the end, claire has to kill sylar/gabriel.  
...**sylar** pleads for claire to '_stay_' with him, so that they could be together ...**gabriel** tells her to "_end it_.", realizing that it is the only way to ever keep claire, and everybody else safe.

*claire kills sylar and the meaning of hiro's words come full circle :"_**save the cheerleader, save the world.**_"


End file.
